Rethinking the Growth Machine: How to Erase a Chinatown from the Urban Core

Abstract

This article explores Houston's two Chinatowns within the context of the city's recent urban reinvestment and revitalization initiatives. It provides a history of the Chinatowns and examines their changing condition during the years that Houston was promoting ethnic diversity and urban revival. The analysis is framed within the growth machine perspective, as initially explored in Houston by Joe Feagin, and later by Jan Lin and Igor Vojnovic. Houston's late-20th-century urban redevelopment initiatives occurred during a period in history when Houston's Chinese entrepreneurs lost their influence over the local growth machine. The eventual outcome was the erasure of Houston's downtown Chinatown and the displacement of its residents from their lucrative urban core location. The disappearance of Old Chinatown and other urban ethnic neighborhoods—including Little Saigon and Freedmen's Town—from the urban core all took place as the Houston media and public were celebrating diversity, pluralism, and ethnicity in the city.